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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22931725">Death Child</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ikebanaka/pseuds/Ikebanaka'>Ikebanaka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Soul Eater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, POV Outsider, Slight Surrealism, Stealth Crossover, how other people see people from death city</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:13:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,226</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22931725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ikebanaka/pseuds/Ikebanaka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The natives of Death City are... different. In more than just the obvious ways.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Death Child</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I have lots of feelings about how Death City natives perceive death, and how it’s part of almost every aspect of their lives, especially given Death is running it</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The girl was dressed like a goth with straight As. It didn’t match the skater boy chic of the strange silver haired boy next to her at all.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">That was your first impression of the two teens that took out the <em>thing</em>, the <em>monster, </em>that had been plaguing your town for nearly two months. You’d been bussing an outside table just before closing at nine when they caught your eye with those outfits that were just a bit too far outside the bounds of normal to blend in. The shitkicking boots the girl was sporting were almost more awesome than the long coat that swirled behind her.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">God you wish you were brave enough to dress like that all the time. Maybe you will now. Go out tomorrow, grab those pants you’ve been eyeing at that Hot Topic.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Or maybe you won’t. After all, you’ll never come close to being as cool as she was.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You saw them around the neighborhood for the next two days, because you’d picked up some long weekend shifts recently and they were at a motel a few blocks away. Also because Cielo’s was near the recent body drops.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Hopefully those will stop now.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When you spotted that long coat and Skater Boy’s distinctive hair the next day, you took some time to really observe them. That’s when you began to notice how different they truly were.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The girl moved different. You didn’t know what it was, at first, that kept pinging your weirdness radar. The clothes weren’t that far out, after all. But once you noticed it, you tried to pinpoint exactly how she moved that was so different.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Maybe it was the way she didn’t walk so much as stalk. Those boots may have been heavy but her steps were not, and every movement flowed into the next in a way that felt like drifting but looked like deliberation. She noticed you almost immediately, of course, as she started to walk past, and when she looked at you, you- well. You froze.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The way she looked over, it was like her head lolled to the side almost, and then she fixed you in place with a stare that was equal parts intense and distant, like she wasn’t seeing you but some deep, inner part of you instead. Her stare was paired with a bright smile that was slightly parted, which somehow reminded you of how you always smelled things better when you breathed through your mouth too. Like an animal scenting prey.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She finished looking you over with a cheeky wink that did nothing whatsoever to change your impression that she was probably not living on the same plane of existence as you.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She passed by mere feet away.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The next day, you actually talked to her. She wanted to ask questions. You obliged, of course, because you’d always had a love of the odd and strange and by God if she didn’t fit the bill.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">They were about the recent murders, of course, because why wouldn’t they be? A more accurate term might’ve been the shredding of people into chunks of gore, with bits missing for that quintessential cannibalism angle that every good nightmare fuel story has.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">A small confession: you <em>maybe</em> know a bit more about the murders than you probably should. Not because you were involved, but because some people in the, ah, <em>organization</em> behind your restaurant had also been trying to catch the fucker responsible and liked to bitch about it after hours. Your ability to be discreet was one of the main reasons you were hired.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The boy definitely picked up on it, which you responded to by saying you’d grab them water or something but you wouldn’t want to talk so close to a <em>family friendly restaurant</em>, there might be kids or something. He narrowed his eyes sharply and displayed an equally sharp set of teeth, before relaxing back into boredom and steering the girl away from ‘why’ questions.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When she was done questioning you, you discreetly informed your boss of exactly what you’d told her and why, and then agreed to be dragged along to see what they’d do with your information.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It was beyond your wildest expectations.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The girl stepped out of inky shadows, the darkness stretching out until her coat finally slipped free like surface tension breaking, and called out to absolutely nothing to come and face her.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And the nothingness did. It was a malformed and bulbous humanoid with flesh dripping off it like candle wax, oozing, and it called out to the girl in a voice like a completely normal middle aged woman losing her mind. It was barely words, and they barely mattered.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As soon as it opened what served it for a mouth, the girl leapt into action. The shadow that was curved behind her whipped into view with a vicious gleam as she charged towards the thing. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Your boss told you in a low voice to <em>watch close, chickadee</em>, and you gave only the slightest acknowledgment so you wouldn’t miss a thing.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Something in the way that wicked curve of sharpness and pain moved struck you like your favorite chord on your bass, until you were ringing like a struck bell inside, feeling a frequency that you just couldn’t hear.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You watched as the girl danced through the monster’s attacks like it was choreographed, what could only have been a scythe whirling through the air in her hands. At times, she moved almost too fast to see, before suddenly becoming weightless. The only constant was the scythe acting as a perfect counterbalance, allowing her to move in ways she never could alone.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When she struck the final blow, you were almost in a trance. It didn’t even seem strange when the scythe melted into the boy’s form, each of them clasping each other’s hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. He reached out with his free hand to grasp the red floating ball that almost looked like it was on fire, holding it up and letting it slide down his throat between his knife sharp teeth.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The girl turned towards us, loose limbed like a doll on strings yet still predatory. My boss stepped into what little light the city provided in this dark corner of itself. She explained her position, gesturing to the flame on the shoulder of her rarely used uniform jacket. She asked if the girl and her partner needed compensation, since we’d failed to take care of this ourselves. The girl responded in the way I had begun to suspect she would.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’m in service to Lord Death. That’s all the compensation I need.” She said it with an almost childish bounce.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Her partner huffed out a laughing breath. “Death Child to the bone.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">I’d heard the stories, the urban legends and myths. It was more than clear that that’s what she was, with her cavalier response to death in all its forms, and the way she was only halfway with the rest of us still focused on life and all its trappings. She had a faint air of the kind of order that comes with madness.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">After all, as she’d commented once in her questioning, everything we are comes from death and ends in death. What other real order is there?</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">None, for a Death Child.</span>
</p>
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